“If you thought this was going to have a happy ending, you weren’t paying attention.”

I laugh down the phone because Amy’s right. Sometimes, for the briefest moments, I still imagine her as my girlfriend. I picture a life that’s impossible, like most of the lives we dream. Whatever Amy dreamed of, I doubt it was this.

Her parents are awaiting trial, she’s going to be a witness, and Logan is probably back with his real family now.

There was no emotional reunion on the news. Whatever happened was in secret, although, remembering how Jay swept up Aaron when he disappeared, I imagined an eruption of relief and a hug that lasted hours.

Maybe one day Pauline Connolly will reveal how it feels to have her son home. But some wounds are too deep to fully heal, and I think she and Logan will always be unknown to the rest of the world.

“How’s your dad?” I ask, and Amy is quiet for a long time.

“I don’t know.”

“I still can’t believe he let you do it.”

“I used to hate him for not standing up to Mum. But I guess he got the better of her in the end.”

“It’s not a win, though, is it?”

Amy sighs. “We don’t deserve to win.”

I think back to that day in the clearing, when Amy told me her plan. Her dad had told Jane that he buried Will in one place when he’d actually hidden him in another. I thought it was to protect his family and to give her a safe place to grieve without ever risking the truth coming out.

It looked like a smart move when Jane got so confident that she brought us there. But Amy destroying the shrine lit a fuse under her mother she knew wouldn’t be stopped. She would explode, she’d blame me, and all we had to do was film it.

“Dad wasn’t protecting Mum,” Amy says. “It was the one thing he had over her. I didn’t know if he would ever use it. But, the day Mum took Aaron, we knew we had to escape. I hated her for making your family suffer. The police found Will’s real grave. Dad told them everything.”

“Was it really you that took Logan?”

Now that Amy is miles away, just a voice in my ear rather than a mystery to solve, I can ask the sort of questions that always stalled before. I don’t think I can upset her any more than she already is.

“Yes,” she says. “I took him.”

I don’t reply, because there’s nothing I can say that’s right. Instead, I wait until she says, “I feel different now it’s over. Not better, just different.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, because I am.